Congressional investigators on Friday called on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google to produce a sweeping list of financial records and business documents, opening a new chapter in a "top-to-bottom" antitrust review of the tech industry.

Sponsor

(C) 2009 – 2014

Posts Tagged ‘Apple’

The Big rumour on the net this week as been the Apple Smart Watch, Apple is not only working on a smart watch, but that it will be constructed out of curved glass, which creates a unique smart watch that fits into place with its current brand designs. This is not the first time there have been rumors about a possible iWatch. Late last year there was word that Apple was interested in a smart watch Intel had developed that included a 1.5 inch display.

Wearable tech is currently a hot trend in technology, however, much like Google’s Glasses project Apple could spend years in development to ensure its newest product type is optimized for use with its smartphone line.

In the meantime, wearable tech is going beyond simple watch and glasses applications. In one case a new pair of “privacy visors” are helping people avoid facial recognition software.

As we all know Apple is the largest and most successful technology company in the world today with all its swanky products, but any idea that did it realyy create all those ideas folded into its shiny gadgets, or did it beg, borrow and steal them? the answer offcourse is all of the above this infographic leaves out all of Apple’s original creations. Which products or characteristics do you think Apple can claim sole responsibility for?

Steve Jobs, who transformed the worlds of personal computing, music and mobile phones, died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after a years-long battle with pancreatic cancer.

The co-founder of Apple Inc, one of the world’s great entrepreneurs, was surrounded by his wife and immediate family when he died in Palo Alto, California. Other details were not immediately available.

His death was announced by Apple and sparked an immediate outpouring of sadness and sympathy from world leaders, competitors and other businessmen including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The Silicon Valley icon who gave the world the iPod, iPhone and iPad had stepped down as chief executive of the world’s largest technology company in August, handing the reins to long-time lieutenant Tim Cook.

He was deemed the heart and soul of a company that rivals Exxon Mobil as the most valuable in America.
“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve,” Apple said in a statement.

“His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.”

Apple paid homage to their visionary leader by changing their website to a big black-and-white photograph of him with the caption “Steve Jobs: 1955-2011.” The flags outside the company’s headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop flew at half mast.
Jobs’ health had been a controversial topic for years and his battle with a rare form of pancreatic cancer a deep concern to Apple fans and investors.

In past years, even board members have confided to friends their concern that Jobs, in his quest for privacy, was not being forthcoming enough with directors about the true condition of his health.

Now, despite much investor confidence in Cook, who has stood in for his boss during three leaves of absence, there remain concerns about whether Apple would stay a creative force to be reckoned with in the longer term without its visionary.
Jobs died one day after the consumer electronics powerhouse unveiled its latest iPhone, the gadget that transformed mobile communications and catapulted Apple to the highest echelons of the tech world.

His death triggered an immediate outpouring of sympathy.
“The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come,” Gates said. “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”

Outside an Apple store in New York, mourners laid candles, bouquets of flowers, an apple and an iPod Touch in a makeshift memorial.

“I think half the world found out about his death on an Apple device,” said Robbie Sokolowsky, 32, an employee for an online marketing company, who lit a candle outside the store.
Cook said in a statement that Apple planned to hold a celebration of Jobs’ life for employees “soon”.
APPLE, NEXT, IPHONE
A college dropout, Buddhist and son of adoptive parents, Jobs started Apple Computer with friend Steve Wozniak in 1976. The company soon introduced the Apple 1 computer.

But it was the Apple II that became a huge success and gave Apple its position as a critical player in the then-nascent PC industry, culminating in a 1980 initial public offering that made Jobs a multimillionaire.

Despite the subsequent success of the Macintosh computer, Jobs’ relationship with top management and the board soured. The company removed most of his powers and then in 1985 he was fired.
Apple’s fortunes waned after that. However, its purchase of NeXT — the computer company Jobs founded after leaving Apple — in 1997 brought him back into the fold. Later that year, he became interim CEO and in 2000, the company dropped “interim” from his title.
Along the way Jobs also had managed to revolutionize computer animation with his other company, Pixar, but it was the iPhone in 2007 that secured his legacy in the annals of modern technology history.

Forbes estimates Jobs’ net worth at $6.1 billion in 2010, placing him in 42nd place on the list of America’s richest. It was not immediately known how his estate would be handled.
Six years ago, Jobs had talked about how a sense of his mortality was a major driver behind that vision.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” Jobs said during a Stanford commencement ceremony in 2005.

“Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Do cell phones cause brain cancer, dementia or have other side effects? Though there have been numerous studies on this, the verdict remains unclear. For, some studies reveal long-term side effects of cell phone usage others term them as mere hype. However, it is largely certain that cell phones do emit radiation. In fact, some analysts are now of the view that all cell phones should compulsorily display their radiation levels. Recently one of the US-based environmental group EWG recently published a list of phones with high levels of RF radiation. The list includes some of the most popular smartphone models from companies like Apple, LG, HTC, Motorola, Blackberry and Samsung.

The study is based on SAR or Specific Absorption Rate. SAR according to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association is “a way of measuring the quantity of radio frequency (RF) energy that is absorbed by the body, (SAR is used to measure exposure to fields between 100 kHz and 10 GHz), as per standards it requires that phones sold have a SAR level at or below 1.5 watts per kilogram (W/kg) taken over a volume of 1 gram of tissue.. Here’s a quick view of that EWG list of the phones with high radiation levels and there SAR levels, in this week of my blog episode :

Motorola Droid

Maximum radiation: Wireless 1.50 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear: 1.49 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 1.50 W/kg

Apple iPhone 3G S

Maximum radiation: 1.19 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear: 0.63 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 0.52 W/kg (GSM 850 Mode)

HTC Nexus One

Maximum radiation: 1.39 W/kg All models/modes
SAR when held at the ear: 0.87 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 1.39 W/kg

Blackberry Bold 9700

Maximum radiation: 1.55 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear: 1.55 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 0.77 W/kg

Samsung Instinct HD

Maximum radiation: 1.16 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear: 1.16 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 0.71 W/kg

Motorola Cliq

Maximum radiation: 1.10 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear: 0.69 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 1.10 W/kg

Motorola Brute i680

Maximum radiation: 0.86 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear: 0.59 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 0.86 W/kg

Pantech Impact

Maximum radiation: 0.92 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear: 0.72 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 0.92 W/kg

LG Chocolate Touch

Maximum radiation: 1.46 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear 1.46 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body 0.79 W/kg

Samsung Mythic

Maximum radiation: 1.08 W/kg
SAR when held at the ear: 0.67 W/kg
SAR when worn on the body: 0.64 W/kg (GSM 1900 Mode)

As i blogged earlier of the upcoming Apple iSlate, and now here it is official Apple PC tablet but the name is iPad 🙂 I am posting the exclusive videos of Unveiling Apple iPad: Steve Jobs Keynote Jan 27 2010

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

What do you think, another giant iPhone for your pocket or did macbook mate with iphone and then boom this iPad 🙂 let me know and yeah did i tell you it starts at $499 (lacks OLED, Flash, USP, GPS, Multitasking, keyboard, HDMI Input, Camera and even Verizon ;)) and will begin shipping in two months…

New Year is on the door and Yesterday I tweeted on “Google’s much-anticipated new phone, the HTC-designed Nexus One, could make its debut 2nd week of Jan.” for all Apple fans here is a good news for you, I know much of you wouldn’t even be aware of it, yes its the iSlate a.k.a Apple Tablet PC is all set of release by the coming months this 2010. I am just providing a exclusive sneek peek on the feature and rumors that are going in the tech industry on this in this week blog. First take a look at how the Apple iSlate looks like, I think it’s more of an IPhone but the difference should be you cannot put it in to your pocket 🙂 (think as a King size iPhone)

It is reportedly rumoured that Apple is holding a media event in San Francisco on January 26 at the Yerba Buena Arts Center, the same place where Apple chief executive Steve Jobs showed off new iPods , where the company is expected to make a major product announcement.

I have heard that the Apple tablet will offer a 9.7-inch screen and sell for $800, or maybe a 6-inch screen, and will sell for under $700 and also heard it will feature a 10.1-inch screen and retail for a cool $1000. As if that’s not enough, there’s a 7-inch model (price unspecified) in addition to the 10-inch tablet. The tablet will either run OS X or something like the iPhone OS. It will play HD video, read e-books, and save the newspaper industry. With all due respect, I’d expect any other tablet to do the same. Though this is a complete touch screen tablet, a tablet with a multi-touch feature: It may sound new to the tablet industry, but for the users? Of course this is expected. It wouldn’t be the image and likeness of the iPhone without a multitouch feat, wouldn’t it? Looks like the US Design Patent No. D504,899 is one for the Apple history books to add this up, also Apple had acquired iSlate.com, other pieces to the puzzle seemed to fall into place soon or later.

We are all not sure how Microsoft is going to feel about this, but perhaps the heated competition will spur sales of PC tablet devices from their current, sluggish pace. At least one thing’s for sure: once this device comes out, tablet devices are officially in. Here is video on how the navigation on the new Apple tablet will look like and also check out http://www.islate.org if you need more videos collections and patents on this:

Here we are, another year ends by and the dawn of a new year!!. We all look back each year to see what went wrong more than what went right, to make sure it is done right the year after, so I thought let me end my blog this year with “times when IT cos said sorry in 2009”, some funny, some foolish, some unwanted, whatever read on for some interesting and funny mistakes ;),,, this year we saw several big IT giants issue regret letters after public outcry. Internet search giant Google had to apologise more than once in 2009, Microsoft too had to say sorry on charges of racial discrimination. The list included many other big names too. Here’s where and why technology companies issued public apology in 2009.

Tech Sorry - ravikanthl.co.cc

1) Gmail goes offline, Google goes red-faced

Even this year we saw Google’s Gmail continue its march on the growth track. However, as Gmail grew, so seemed to be the woes for its users. The year saw Gmail services getting disrupted several times, sometimes these outages were regional while on other occasions global. Consequently, the search giant Google had to often extend apology to its sea of users for the inconvenience suffered.

The latest outage occurred in September. According to the company, the outage saw Gmail going offline for a “majority” of its email users, including its paid consumers. Earlier in May, millions of people were cut off from Google’s search engine, e-mail and other online services after too much traffic was routed through computers in Asia. About 14 per cent of Google’s users encountered problems with the Internet’s No. 1 search engine.
The frequent outages made analysts wonder if Gmail is getting too unwieldy for the search giant to manage.

2) Microsoft repents ‘photo editing’

Software giant Microsoft found itself at the end of a racism row forcing it to tender an apology. The software leader apparently altered a photo in a company advertisement on its website to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture. A photo on the company’s US website showed two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. However, on the website of Microsoft’s Polish business unit, the black man’s head was replaced with that of a white man. The colour of his hand remained unchanged, this was really funny, not at least for the tech part but the culture they adopt. 🙂

3) Google sorry again, this time for first lady

Don’t worry where’s Microsoft there’s Google, Internet search giant’s image results recently created a stir when it was pointed out that the image results for US first lady Michelle Obama showed a racist image in the top results. The image search result which showed Michelle Obama as a monkey women was later removed by Google.

Google also apologised for the image. In a statement, the company said, “Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries.” “We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google,” the statement added. Google also ran several advertisements to explain the appearance of racist and anti-Semitic material in its search results.

4) Vista a mistake: Microsoft CEO

I did try there beta versions earlier and my first thought, what a flop Microsoft, Over the years, Vista has witnessed criticism from several quarters. However, for the first time the operating system was laughed off by none other than the company’s CEO itself, just like me heheheh 😉

Ahead of the launch of its new operating system Windows 7 in October, Microsoft laughed at Windows Vista which according to its CEO tarnished the company’s reputation. At an event, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said that the company never recovered from the poor performance of Vista. Ballmer was qouted as saying, “We got some uneven reception when [Vista] first launched in large part because we made some design decisions to improve security at the expense of compatibility. I don’t think from a word-of-mouth perspective we ever recovered from that.” Good words there from our tech mammoths, what about those who are still using Vista 😦

5) Apple sorry for Baby Shaker app

I told you there is every reason which will make you sorry for, Apple stirred almost anything on there i-Phones isn’t, this time they stirred the wrong one.. Just three days after launch, Apple pulled the plug on its Baby Shaker app. The application was pulled following a strong protest from child advocacy groups who termed the app highly offensive.

The 99-cent application created by Sikalosoft allowed users to silence a virtual screaming baby by violently shaking the iPhone. The app description showed, “Never, never shake a baby.” It also advised, “See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down.” In a statement Apple apologised for allowing Baby Shaker into the iTunes store, and said, “This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store.” There you go, Apple..

6) Amazon apologises for Kindle book deletions

In July this year, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued an apology over a surprise deletion of books that Kindle owners had purchased and downloaded to their devices.

Bezos apologised in a posting on the Kindle Community forum for the deletion of two books, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, explaining that the company will be changing its policy in the future.

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and other novels on Kindle,” “Our ‘solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.”

7) VMware says sorry to Microsoft

Here is another Sorry man, VMware’s Scott Drummonds apologied to Microsoft after posting a YouTube video that misled viewers on the reliability of Microsoft’s Hyper-V.

The video showed Microsoft Hyper-V crashing while running VMware’s VMmark platform. The video also implied that Hyper-V crashes caused April’s massive TechNet and MSDN outages. Scott Drummonds’ apology reads, “The video was a bit hyperbolic in its dramatization of Hyper-V’s reliability. Unfortunately, my intention to stir the pot with eye-poking banter has put my credibility and by association VMware’s credibility in question among some of you. … We will absolutely work our best to live up to the high standard you’ve come to expect from us. And when we mess up, we’ll be the first to address the mistake head on.”

8) Yahoo apologises for lap dance

The Climax ends with lap dance story from Yahoo, In October 2009, Yahoo apologised to its Taiwanese clients over a lap dance show organised during its brainstorming meeting for Internet engineers in Taipei.

The rare move came after girls wearing bras and miniskirts performed in front of male participants seated on stage during an event that was part of a Yahoo Hack Day, where developers work on creating new web applications. Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo Developer Network said in a statement, “This incident is regrettable and we apologise to anyone that we have offended.” Heck we all missed that Yahoo Hack Day..

That all folk for this year, Mistakes are everywhere who cares them now a days unless u own one seriously 🙂 Hope you have a great and SORRY-less 2010 year, Catch you in 2009, Ooops SORRY, that’s my last SORRY this year, Catch you in 2010 🙂 …